2007-07-17

Google (?) PhotoSketch - Rapid Photo Modelling

Photomodelling has been a slightly disregarded technology since Adobe acquired and subsequently dropped CANOMA (see our post on Great Software from the Past). The release of Google Earth and more recently Microsoft's Virtual Earth have bought the issue of rapid photomodelling to the forefront of the race to capture cities digitally.

To date Microsoft have been leading the way with their photorealistic automatic capture of cities such a New York (see Populating the Digital Earth) with the aim of 500 new cities in the next year. While this is impressive it lacks the 'community owned' approach of Google and thus numbers of users.

As such it is without surprise that Google has just released a video detailing its new product 'PhotoSketch' - a combination of automatic camera calibration from photographs and the simplicity of modelling using SketchUp. PhotoSketch addresses a number of the points needed for rapid photomodelling for Google Earth and general city model development.

The presentation is 58 minutes long but well worth the time, grab a cup of tea, sit back and take a look at PhotoSketch:

Aimed as ever with Google at the average user rather than the high end photogrammetric market it has the potential to change the modelling industry.

I think the guy talking about the level of model detail has a fair point. If the model simply isn't rich/detailed enough the end product will look fairly amateurish.

I am more interested in the idea of the model being derived from the texture, and as such having as much detail as the images. Applying the texture to the model to get the end product in this way limits the capabilities to the skill of the modeler.